Update on the upcoming Belvedere Book We were working to have all “memories” for the book submitted by September 30 (of THIS year!), but we need quite a few more memories if we are to have enough material for a book.
If you have not yet submitted your memoir, please start working on it now. We want everyone to be included. Please share your memorable moments of times past in Charlevoix for future generations to enjoy.
The image below shows the articles submitted to The Archives Committee as of March 11, 2023. These articles are currently being “lightly” edited for spelling, grammar, punctuation, etc. before final submission to the publisher.
This is a SCREENSHOT image of the contributor list as of March 11, 2023
Option to make a recording of memories rather than writing a memory at least one senior member of the Club had expressed a desire to provide a memory but did not want to compose it and write it down.
To facilitate this memoir, the Archives Committee arranged for someone to record random memories from this person while having a conversation and asking questions. This recording will be transcribed, and someone will arrange the thoughts shared into a coherent memory.
Since any smartphone can record these days, we encourage those who are hesitant to compose their own memories to ask someone with a smartphone to record (audio or video) their thoughts for them. The recording can then be emailed to Potter Orr (maybe Dropbox for a video) and he will have it transcribed and we will have someone composes the memoir. Let Potter know at potter@orrcomputer.com if you would like any assistance in arranging a recording.
Volunteers to help with the book We plan to summarize the history of the Club in the book and are inviting any interested volunteers to read the first two Belvedere Club books and make note of interesting facts that should be included in this summary.
Please make a note of the source of each fact (e.g., Brown Book page 173). We think this summary will be of great benefit to readers interested in the history of the Club. Information from any other sources or memories that are appropriate for this summary is welcome as well.
There is a great outline of major events at the Club from 1878-2013 in the booklet prepared for the 135th anniversary of the Club a few years ago. If anyone does not have that booklet and would like to see the summary, please let Chris Payne know at chrispayne634@gmail.com and he will send the outline to you.
Send Chris any interesting facts you find. The Archives Committee
Looking Back – David Miles Charlevoix Historical Society
It’s the end of another summer, and we wish our resorters a fond farewell while we look forward to their arrival again next year.
Looking Back now looks back at an event that took place on the Belvedere decades ago, the exact date unknown.
“The Belvedere bridge is a work of art, of the rustic order, and a credit to its builder.” — Charlevoix Sentinel, Oct. 8, 1908.
In the middle of the first decade of the 20th century, a local man named John Lynn had been making a name for himself with his unique creations built of cedar harvested from throughout the area.
He had established the Rustic Furniture Company in 1896 with his brothers and associates, then changed the name to the Rustic & Decorative Company in 1907, with 15 people employed.
Lynn was known as the “Rustic Man” for his extremely talented work in wood.
In 1908, the Charlevoix Summer Home Association, later to be known officially as the Belvedere Club, commissioned him to build this rustic bridge across the ravine near the resort’s south end.
During the off-season, local residents were allowed to wander the resort at will, and many Charlevoix residents still remember walking and bicycling across this unique structure that stretched in total over 200 feet.
A great story regarding the bridge has come down in the form of a letter from member G. E. Hollingsworth of Jackson, Michigan, to Bernice Wexstaff, who wrote for the Courier, more than 50 years ago.
Following is a portion, exactly as written: “I can remember many choice bits about Belvedere that of course cannot be a part of any history.
The two famous families the August Busch Sr. (of the St. Louis brewing dynasty) and the Schubert family (Mrs. Busch and Mrs. Schubert were sisters).
Lilly Schubert was a most beautiful woman — in fact, she was crowned in those years a Miss America.
Beautiful Lilly was married to Schlangley — then Troll — during one of her marriages, she and her spouse went for a stroll over the old rustic bridge.
Just about the time they reached the middle, right over the ravine (the portion seen here), an argument reached the boiling point.
Lilly stripped off her some $100,000 in diamonds, earrings, rings, and the works, and threw them into the brush of the ravine.
Of course, many domestics, coachmen, grooms, etc. of the two families, with lanterns recovered the loot.
However, when the young fries of the Belvedere were asked ‘Where (are you going) to today?’, the answer for the rest of the summer was — ‘going to the ravine to look for diamonds.’
This is a true but UNPRINTABLE story — that can be vouched for by many that I can name. Unquote.” How great would it be to see this masterpiece of rustic engineering appear in Charlevoix once again?
The word belvedere is derived from two Italian words: bel, meaning beautiful, and vedere, which means view. The English language has borrowed the word since the late 1500s. Appropriately enough, it’s the name of an exclusive summer community in Charlevoix with a beautiful view of its own.
The Belvedere Club’s storied history began in the late 1800s. In 1878, the club was called the Charlevoix Resort Association. It started when a group of people from various church groups further south came Up North and built a half dozen cottages near the Pine River Channel in Charlevoix.
“These groups first traveled here to get away from the summertime heat and disease in big cities like Nashville, St. Louis, and Cincinnati,” Joy explained. “Add in a little ‘summer fever,’ and the wealthy people figured that Charlevoix would be a pretty great place to build their vacation getaways.”
In 1879, the Belvedere Hotel was built as a boarding home for guests of the resort as well as loggers; it burned down in 1886 and was replaced by the New Belvedere Hotel in 1887, with rates of $2 per night or $6 per week. By 1882, more and more cottages were being added to what was now called the Charlevoix Summer Resort Organization. Finally, in 1923, the group added a “casino” and changed the name to the Belvedere Club.
“The term ‘casino’ [didn’t mean] a gambling facility,” Joy quickly explained. “It was a different term back then, simply meaning a place where parties and gatherings were held.”
Some of the oldest and most notable homes of the Belvedere Club have huge terraces with spectacular views across Lake Charlevoix. Belvedere cottages on the other side of the resort overlook downtown Charlevoix, the annual 4th of July fireworks display and the neighboring Chicago Club, which is much like the Belvedere Club, just a little smaller.
“The Chicago Club is mostly people from Chicago, as the name would suggest,” Joy said. “They only have about 30 cottages, but at the turn of the century, it was said the Chicago Club actually had more millionaires than there were millionaires across the entire U.S.”
Ninety cottages still remain at the Belvedere Club today, behind big white gates that are closed and locked at night during the summer season. Most are still the original buildings from 1878; Joy noted that only a few cottages have been “built new” in recent years. “I’m guessing around 70–80 percent were actually built before 1940,” he said, “and the interesting thing is that they were built, literally, with whatever you could find.”
During the time that Belvedere was being expanded, northern Michigan was the scene of a lumber boom. Much of the area was being clear cut, with the lakes and streams full of lumber on its way elsewhere. The cottages in Belvedere were consequently built with clapboard, ship beams and leftover lumber. “It’s not like you could go to Home Depot back then,” Joy pointed out. But this approach made each cottage individual and unique, and many of the owners went the extra mile to add special ornate features like crow’s nests, cupolas and secret passages. Also included in some of the cottages were hidden service entrances, as these were more genteel times. In addition to the exclusivity of the club itself, Belvedere members also commonly employed maids, chauffeurs and other service staff.
“I remember growing up here, and it was just a normal thing that all the Belvedere people had ‘help,’” Joy recollected. “The help was as generational as the families that came up here, so if you were a maid and you worked for, say, Mr. and Mrs. Smith, then your kids would grow up to work for the Smiths, and your grandkids would work for them, too. But all the help was treated very well, like part of the family.”
Employing “help” continued until the end of the 1970s and for the most part phased out as the ‘80s arrived. “By 1988, I think just a couple of families were bringing their own help up with them,” Joy said. “Today some still have nannies for their kids, but that’s about it.”
Also generational are the cottages themselves. Family members of each cottage have first dibs on them, and there’s a membership board that must approve any construction or improvements on the cottages. While most Belvedere members keep their exteriors true to the original period, just sprucing them up as needed, many families upgrade interior features like kitchens, bathrooms and fireplaces. David Gray is the Belvedere Club’s general manager; he’s been there for the past five years. “Belvedere respects the architecture that came before,” he explained. “When [owners] do make changes, they kind of mirror what was already there and just renew and refresh it.”
In order to buy outright if you’re not already a Belvedere Club family member, you first have to be approved to rent. Then you have to rent acceptably for a certain number of seasons so the membership board can get to know you. “Once you’re approved, you can apply to buy, but right now only about one or two cottages per year actually come up for sale,” Joy said.
About half the Belvedere cottages are winterized; the grounds are open to the public in the winter for foot traffic and cross country skiing, and some Belvedere families return to their cottages for Christmas or ski trips. “But most of the winterized cottages don’t really get used that much,” Joy said. “The owners think they’re going to come up here every winter, but really they only come up maybe every five or six years.”
Summer remains the high season, although the schedule is a little different these days. “Members used to come up on Memorial Day and leave on Labor Day, but now the season’s been shortened,” Gray said. “Kids often stay in school until June and have to be back as early as August; some families do stay the entire summer, but others only spend about six to eight weeks here.”
Access to Lake Charlevoix is the obvious draw of the Belvedere Club, but similar to what you might remember in the movie Dirty Dancing, in travelogues about the resorts of Pennsylvania’s popular Poconos or in nearby places like Petoskey’s own Bay View summer community, Belvedere also has its own slate of classic summer activities that recollect the longstanding traditions of summer camps from the 1950s and ‘60s.
“Once kids hit age five, we have ‘gangs’ for them, all the way up through the teenagers,” Joy explained. “You start early with tennis, golf and learning to sail, and for the older kids there are overnight trips to places like the Grand Hotel on Mackinac Island and Tahquamenon Falls in the U.P.”
Beach time is another popular pursuit, and the Belvedere Club has its own beach with multicolored cabanas. Each family owns its own cabana, sturdy structures made of refined cement block with colorful awnings stretching out over the front entrances. Some cabanas even have refrigerators and bars. There’s also a garden club, plenty of scenic landscaping and a small yacht club with 30 privately owned boathouses and a couple of 20–foot daysailers available to take club members and guests on mannerly cruises around the lake.
Mrs. Nancy Porter lives Up North full time. Previously from Missouri, she married local dentist Jeffrey Porter (now retired) and became a Charlevoix resident and member of the Belvedere Golf Club, but she knows the Belvedere Club well. She visited for the first time with her parents when she was five years old.
“We came up from St. Louis, and my parents rented a cottage at Belvedere,” Porter said. “I remember belonging to the ‘gang,’ swimming and playing golf and tennis. There was such a sense of freedom, even at the age of five – being able to walk downtown and get an ice cream on my own felt very grown–up at the time. There’s no way you could do that now, and we didn’t do that at all in St. Louis.”
After that initial visit, Porter returned with her parents in 1958 when she was 15 years old and quickly caught up with other teens she’d played with as a child. “We’d meet at the casino and dance, and there was a lot of waterskiing and hanging out at the beach,” she said. By her late 20s, Porter had purchased her own Belvedere cottage (“history repeating itself,” she said.) And she still sees many of her Belvedere Club friends today. “Some of them I’ve known since I was 15,” she recalled. “It was always so hot and humid in St. Louis, so we’d come up to Belvedere and Charlevoix and see all these people again, and it was just like another world. In those days, too, people didn’t have TVs or air conditioning up here – you didn’t need them. So it was very different and very memorable.”
The casino was another big draw at Belvedere, with its casual resort feel and big wraparound porch. Today, it offers daily lunches in the summer and special evening dinners for members as well as events like coat and tie dinners, banquets and weddings, all right on the lake.
“In the summers, Memorial Day through Labor Day, the casino is members only; it’s made available for the public to book in the off–season for weddings and parties,” Joy explained.
The previously mentioned golf club – Joy’s domain – was the host of the Michigan Amateur Golf Championship for 40 years and is just now getting its own mini–renovation that will hearken back to Belvedere’s early days.
“A print shop in downtown Charlevoix was being demolished to make room for a new restaurant, and in so doing, they found drawings from 1925 with William Watson’s original plans for Belvedere’s golf club and golf course,” Joy explained. “We were very excited about this, so we’re using them to restore the club and course back to how they were meant to be.”
This process began last fall and is slated for completion by Memorial Day this year. The golf club is open to the public, with the exception of member hours for tee off from noon to 2pm every day, so it’s a great place to get a sneak peek at the golf club’s new vintage revamp or an introduction to the Belvedere Club itself.
Indeed, nearly 140 years later, the allure continues to be strong for this unique summer community. Is this a surprise to Joy, considering how much our country and its social structures have changed since the 1800s?
“The Belvedere Club is antiquated only in the sense that some of the money is running out,” he said. “But as far as traditions go, I think everyone wants to be a member. You’re in Charlevoix, with views of the lake, and it’s just a beautiful place to be.”
Gray agreed that tradition is a big part of why places like Belvedere still matter. “These families have been coming here for years, so it means a lot to them to keep all these memories intact,” he said. It’s also a place, he added, where you can meet friends and family, people you might not see all winter long, and pick up right where you left off.
“It’s like a summer camp you go to for your entire life,” Joy concluded, “but it’s a camp you never grow out of.”
Margeaux Leakas and Lacey Flanigan were riding a jet ski on Lake Charlevoix when they saw a man struggling in the water. The man was John Leitz, who had fallen off his boat and was not wearing a life jacket. Leakas jumped into the water and swam to Leitz, while Flanigan steered the jet ski. Leakas managed to drag Leitz to a nearby boat that came to help. Leitz was taken to a hospital and survived thanks to their quick actions.
When they saw a dinghy circling around in the middle of the lake with no one in the driver’s seat, they knew there was something wrong.
When Margeaux Leakas, 16, of Dayton, Ohio, and her friend Lacey Flanagan, 17, of St. Louis, Mo. decided to meet their friend and go for a ride in Flanagan’s jet ski, they saw something that didn’t look right.
“People were just standing on their docks, pointing to the water. All those people had bigger boats or yachts, so they couldn’t really do anything,” said Flanigan “I mean, by the time they would have gotten themselves untied and started up, it would have been too late. So, we just booked it over there.”
What the people on the dock saw was a drowning man. “we could see a man in a bright blue shirt from where we were, and he was just throwing his arms around everywhere,” said Leakas.
The man in distress, Robert Leitz, 62, of Sister Bay, Wisc., was not wearing a life-jacket.
“I figured it wasn’t going to be a long trip, and I could see my friend’s boat from where I was,” he said. “I was going to visit a friend of mine on the other side of the lake, so I kind of had my guard down.”
According to Leitz, he was only about 100 yards off of the municipal dock when he took the throttle of the boat and throttled up.
“All of a sudden the boat jumped out from under me,” he said.
Leitz, who claims to be a pretty good swimmer, and has been involved with boating for over 30 years, said he just made a stupid mistake.
“My first instinct was to try to catch up to the dinghy because at the time it was just idling away from me,” he said. “The water was so cold though and I was losing strength as I was trying to catch up to it.”
Leitz said someone told him the water was 52 degrees when he fell in. Anything less than 70 degrees can induce hypothermia.
“I was in the water for four or five minutes. If those girls hadn’t gotten to me in time, I think I would have lost consciousness,” said Leitz.
Leitz’s only hope was the two girls on the jet ski who were still out of reach at that point.
As he was fighting to keep his head above the water, the dinghy was coming back at him.
“I knew there was nothing I could do, so I lifted my arm up to try and knock the boat out of the way,” Leitz said. “The next thing I knew, I was looking at the bottom of the dinghy.”
The propellor of the dinghy sliced his ear and a part of his shoulder, leaving him in need of approximately seven stitches in his ear.
When the girls got to the scene, they saw Leitz bleeding and flailing around in the water.
One of the girls threw him her life jacket but Leitz didn’t respond to it. So, Leakas decided to jump in the water and save him herself.
Flanigan was not only steering the jet-ski, but she was tied to it as well, so this left Leakas to save the man’s life.
The 135-pound Leakas was somehow able to swim the 250 to 300-pound Leitz to safety by getting him to a nearby boat that was on its way.
“There was a family on that boat, and the father kind of helped me lift him up onto their boat,” Leakas said. “From there, the family covered the man’s face with a towel because that’s where the bleeding was coming from; then they headed toward the Wards to get the man to a hospital.”
After Leakas got back on the jet-ski, the girls located the out-of-control dinghy. Flanigan jumped on the small boat, which had run into a moored sailboat, and hit the killswitch.
Later in the day, the girls met the man they saved, and his wife, at the hospital.
“Both he and his wife gave us a great big hug and they just kept saying ‘thank you, thank you, thank you.’ They were incredibly grateful towards us,” Flanigan said. “It’s so weird: Last summer, I rode the jet-ski around and used it for fun all season long; This year, I used it to save somebody’s life.”
“I had never taken any life-saving classes before,” she said. “The water was freezing, and I don’t even know how I was able to do it. I can hardly remember how I swam with him.”
Leakas added, “He was moving around everywhere and I think I just put my arm around his chest or over his shoulder to get him over to that family’s boat.”
Ann Denison, Leakas’ grandmother, was the first to receive the girl following her heroic action.
“She just came home to me and didn’t say anything. She was shaking,” Denison said. “When I asked her what was wrong, she said, ‘I just saved a man’s life.’ You could tell she was in shock.”
She added, “I told her, ‘you should feel lucky, not everyone gets the chance to save somebody’s life.”
“They really are very amazing girls,” Denison said. “They did the right thing and I’m very proud of them.”
